Hobbes Kessler should 110% go pro

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

Well, in Rupp's case he is flourishing away from Salazar...under Mike Smith. Smith just seems like a remarkable coach. He's doing a great job with Nico Young who had a big-time HS coach as well. Warhurst is available to go back to a la Webb and Raczko (sp.) if things don't work out with Mike Smith.

How is Rupp flourishing? A 60:22 half? That’s a fairly average performance for him. Not to say that Mike Smith isn’t doing a good job. We just don’t have any real data points yet.

ball fan wrote:

I just don't think NAU is the right fit for him. NAU is a high mileage 10k oriented team. Kessler would be infinitely better off at Oregon under Ben Thomas.

Agreed. I think in no way should he go to NAU. He should either stay with Warhurst or go to Oregon. The training needs to prioritize him getting to 1:43 before it prioritizes him running 27:30.

5000m fan wrote:

Why fix what ain’t broke? Surely a shoe company would pay for his college and he could stay training with warhurst. He’s better than drew hunter was in HS and adidas gave him a ton of money. Discus

For anyone wondering, Adidas gave Hunter approximately $400k/year for ten years. I believe that does not include tuition and coaching, which were also included in the deal.

LondonLocal wrote:

Drew runs well at HS *LR criticises for going pro early*

Hobbs runs well at HS *LR suggests going pro*

Ridiculous. Go to College, if you're a real talent and have a good coach, you'll continue progressing and contracts will be there for you after college.

Yea but you miss out on X number of years of income in a sport where there isn't a ton of money and nothing is guaranteed. Also nobody is saying not to go to college. Get your degree but consider how it's getting paid for.

This is like when college basketball coaches steer kids to come back instead of going to the draft when they're a projected late 1st or 2nd round pick. They tell the kid to come back, work on their weaknesses, and then their stock will improve. The problem? It's not a 1:1 payout. Sometimes you are what you are & don't move up & they could have started their pro careers a year sooner. It's also up to the athlete. Some might love the college lifestyle and won't care at the end of the day if they didn't go to the G-League or Europe a year sooner. But they don't make these decisions pressure free or with people only thinking about what's best for them.

Most runners should improve regardless of training in the NCAA system or as a pro as an 18/19 year old. More miles. Better workouts. Harder training. I would argue that the NCAA system (let's say just in running for this thought) doesn't have the best interests of the athletes in mind. They have to peak 3 times a year and maybe try to do too many events during championship season. Cooper Teare and Cole Hocker are on fire rn. I hope they're still on fire by the time the Trials roll around. They're convinced they have to perform at NCAA Outdoors. They're bought into putting on for their team? Is that the best thing for them if they want to make the Olympics? I don't have that answer. Maybe they can do it all. Maybe they recover fine. Maybe they just get beat at the Trials. All I can say for certain is that current pros will have everything geared towards the Trials and won't be trying to peak twice.

The $$$ is not guaranteed to be there if improvements don't come, if injuries come, if new guys come up, etc. I think having a ton of talent now & a coach thinking about national and global championships is not a bad thing to consider.

Totally disagree that Kessler should go pro. Pretty much no 18 year old is mature enough to adapt to and thrive within a professional running environment. You want to be spending time with peers your age, learning, growing, making mistakes, etc. No holed up in an apartment all day sitting around doing nothing until your afternoon double.

While college running may not be ideal for the super elite HS kids, it's certainly better than going pro at that age. It also, ideally, prolongs an athlete's runway. They can focus on being a college athlete for 3-5 years, and then focus on being a pro athlete afterward. Having running literally as your job at 18 or 19 seems like a recipe for disaster.

Hard to judge, look at Noah Lyles, had a pretty good transition to the pros, but it might be easier for a sprinter to transition. I remember my HS coach wasn't sure about how more Hunter could improve because of how intense his HS training was, so it was probably the smart move for him. I'm not sure how committed Kessler is to track, but going pro with all the current hype he has is probably the best way to get paid.

Smith is a terrific coach but his program is massive mileage and workload.

I'm in alignment with stikcing with the same coach like Rupp/Salazar and Lagat/Li

Kessler looks much better than Hunter did when running similar times. I really see a 3:35 1500 this summer for him.

True Elites wrote:

Totally disagree that Kessler should go pro. Pretty much no 18 year old is mature enough to adapt to and thrive within a professional running environment. You want to be spending time with peers your age, learning, growing, making mistakes, etc. No holed up in an apartment all day sitting around doing nothing until your afternoon double.

While college running may not be ideal for the super elite HS kids, it's certainly better than going pro at that age. It also, ideally, prolongs an athlete's runway. They can focus on being a college athlete for 3-5 years, and then focus on being a pro athlete afterward. Having running literally as your job at 18 or 19 seems like a recipe for disaster.

Did it stop Jakob from becoming a solid 1500m-10000m runner? If anything, a college environment has additional downsides compared to the pro lifestyle, like girls and drinking/partying multiple nights a week. Why do you think BYU is doing so well consistently year after year? Not the only reason, but one is that they just don't party as hard and don't drink like other colleges do (not saying it's wrong to do it, I mean enjoy your life but it will affect the running a little bit).

Being a pro in 2021 doesn't mean sitting at the coach all day. Look at how much Drew Hunter has achieved already in his early 20s. He built a huge brand, an apparel-store that's printing money and done lots of entrepreneurial work and innovations. His life is just as full as of a college kid.

We can't take the examples of some college kids becoming world-beaters and some early pros failing to deliver as proof that anyone should go to college. It depends on the individual, the college, which training he thrives on, how much he already trained in college, etc. I like to mention to Hunter/Fisher case repeatedly because as it went on it became clearer that it was more about Fisher simply just being a more talented runner than Hunter, and Fisher would still be the better runner now had he gone pro and Hunter to college. Hunter just trained harder in HS, was not distracted by playing lots of soccer each week and his potential for further improvement was smaller than for Fisher.

Cheetahspeed wrote:

Hard to judge, look at Noah Lyles, had a pretty good transition to the pros, but it might be easier for a sprinter to transition. I remember my HS coach wasn't sure about how more Hunter could improve because of how intense his HS training was, so it was probably the smart move for him. I'm not sure how committed Kessler is to track, but going pro with all the current hype he has is probably the best way to get paid.

That's because in sprinting talent is imminent and easily observable. Everyone already knew in HS that Bolt, Lyles, etc. would all go on to do great things and that their potential was extreme. In fact you would know that even before HS. Also you can't peak sprinters at early age like you can do distance runners. Training in sprints is hard to mess up, the most important thing are 3x workouts a week, then stuff like 3 strength sessions get added as supplemental work. Even the worst HS coaches won't overtrain a sprinter by 7 hard track workouts a week. So ultimately the most talented sprinters are the ones who also succeed.

In distance running, some people might just be HS phenoms because they train a lot harder than their peers. Or because they have a better HS coach (I know people here have something against me saying this, but lots of HS coaches suck and are not made for the job. Lots of potential talent gets destroyed year after year by HS coaches with no clue).

That's why I'm worried about someone like Brynn Brown who already ran 110+ mpw in HS and did crazy workouts like 4xMile all sub 5 pace on short rest. That's a massive workload for a teenage girl. Did it make her good now? Definitely. Was it the right thing to prepare her for the ideal future, and potentially reach Olympics? I doubt it. Just seen to many burnouts already and peaks in HS due to extreme training that was just not sustainable.

Kessler has achieved his success on very moderate training (especially in terms of mileage), and compared to someone like Hunter actually has an extremely smooth running form, so I'm sure he will improve anyway whether he goes to college or pro. I think that's the important thing, not where he ultimately ends up with.

Holy cow. I didn't know she ran 110 mpw. That won't be end well if true.

LondonLocal wrote:

Drew runs well at HS *LR criticises for going pro early*

Hobbs runs well at HS *LR suggests going pro*

Ridiculous. Go to College, if you're a real talent and have a good coach, you'll continue progressing and contracts will be there for you after college.

Feel like Hunter gets criticized more for choosing not to train with true elites, not for going pro early

Regardless, need a 10 year contract for it to make sense

5000m fan wrote:

Why fix what ain’t broke? Surely a shoe company would pay for his college and he could stay training with warhurst. He’s better than drew hunter was in HS and adidas gave him a ton of money. Discus

Why would a company throw $50k+ at a 3:57 miler? There are a lot of people in NCAA right now who can run that and will not be offered anywhere near that. In another year or two there will be yet another 3:57 high school miler. Just because someone has run 3:57 in the mile does not guarantee they're going to run 3:52 in the mild which is what it would take to be in any conversation for making a world team. It is very hard to get a contract these days.

Let's look at the sub 4 high schoolers in the past decade who have had the chance to go through college:

Lukas Verzbicas 2011 - Quit running in college and got in bike accident, no improvement

Matt Maton 2015 - Improved slightly in college, but wasn't an NCAA star or professional no idea what he's doing now

Grant Fisher 2015 - Has olympic standard in 5k, pretty good 1500

Drew Hunter 2016 - Improved a second in the mile, biggest gains in the 3k/5k but no olympic standard yet

Michael Slagowski 2016 - Has gotten way slower since high school, ran 4:10 in 2018

Reed Brown 2017 - Gotten slightly faster at 3:56

So out of 6 athletes, one has exceptionally panned out (Grant Fisher), two have done pretty well but maybe not worth an insane contract out of high school (Drew Hunter, Reed Brown), and three were not much improvement or a complete bust (Maton, Slagowski, Verzbicas)

So betting on a fast high school distance runner to keep improving and be the best in a few years is 50/50 at best, probably worse odds than that.

There are plenty of sub 3:40 1500 meter runners coming out of college that would take a $30k per year contract, and $30k would not even be worth it for Hobbs to skip college. He could get full scholarship at a lot of schools with a 3:57 PR along with paid travel to races and shoes and gear and the excitement of competing for NCAA titles (he won't be winning many professional races), a value above $30k.

stantheman72 wrote:

5000m fan wrote:

Why fix what ain’t broke? Surely a shoe company would pay for his college and he could stay training with warhurst. He’s better than drew hunter was in HS and adidas gave him a ton of money. Discus

For anyone wondering, Adidas gave Hunter approximately $400k/year for ten years. I believe that does not include tuition and coaching, which were also included in the deal.

This is not accurate, it's $400k over ten years plus college, not $400k each year for ten years.

So for people who can't do math, it's $40k each year for 10 years plus college. Luckily his teammates are paying his mortgage.

He went where he wanted to go and could climb and run with a great program, but I have to say that Ron Warhurst and Nick Willis were perfect for Kessler and he risks that by going to a program where the focus is up the distances when he is a miler plain and simple. He might be a 3:52 miler by the end of outdoors this year, but it's still not a good path for someone his age who even if he runs 3:52 would still be approximately 8 seconds behind the best in the world and a couple seconds behind the ability needed to make an American team. We have two 3:50 guys indoors and yet a sub 3:50 guy (Gregorek) might well not make the team. The kid has a tremendous future, though, and who knows what that kind of turn of speed might do in a tactical 3:37 trials race?

Nope. $100k per year plus college. Somebody would give that deal to Kessler today. He looks much better than any of the other guys mentioned, even Fisher.

^this

I read in a climbing mag he chose NAU for the running and climbing, as he was looking at cu and school of mines but thought flagstaff had way more things for him. He seems very mature, been at the bottom end pro level of climbing since he was little, had gone on big climbing trips a number of times, so i highly doubt he is the kind of snowflake that will get homesick. Him and a buddy did a route in el cap with no parents at like 16.....i dont think anyone has to guess if he can handle being far from home or being intimidated by teammates or workouts.

He said his goal were first sub 4 person to climb v15 and 5.15, he has 5.14c already so he is close

stantheman72 wrote:

5000m fan wrote:

Why fix what ain’t broke? Surely a shoe company would pay for his college and he could stay training with warhurst. He’s better than drew hunter was in HS and adidas gave him a ton of money. Discus

For anyone wondering, Adidas gave Hunter approximately $400k/year for ten years. I believe that does not include tuition and coaching, which were also included in the deal.

You have never provided a source for this number. We actually have no idea what his contract is.